Ground Zero

The ground zero and Chernobyl

The 9/11 crash site of world trade center is often referred to as ground zero after the disaster of 2001. The memorial now built over the previous world trade center remind us how much taller the skyscraper it is only few seconds away from the reach of the ground. And that I think is a more formal definition for a ground zero, and which is meant by the people who named the rumble of concrete and metal mixed with human blood on the doom's day. If the basement is the ground zero of a skyscraper, what is the ground zero of a society?

Manhatton Ground Zero

Have you seen the film "I am legend" where Will Smith (before the slap) plays the role of a lonely survivor of an apocalyptic ending to the human society by a deadly virus? In the first chapter of the film, there is no other actor than himself and the dog. And while watching, it made me realize that is "the ground zero". A real ground zero of a collapsed society. Later I learned the abandoned city the film captured was a real city in Ukraine before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. There are a plenty of videos, and documentaries about how the nature has slowly engulfed the city structures and wildlife flourish nowadays against all the odds and the threat to life by the deadly elephant foot of uranium core at the heart of the city. A real ground zero of a doomed society is there in front of our eyes. I consider ourselves lucky just like Robert Neville the scientist who played golf on an empty city once roamed by cars and carbon dioxide, to see our dooms day before it happened. But that is not the end of the story. As I realized there is another ground zero.

What is my ground zero? What is your ground zero?

It might mean different things when I say to consider your ground zero. But during the philosophical journey the Magical mindful living takes, I have come to realize there is a ground zero. Which is untouchable, unreachable, and unexplainable. Just like nothingness, with this ground zero What I can do is only accept it as it is. Mind you, although the characteristics of this ground zero is as above, it has a great unexplainable value too. It just helps me find baseline of the being when I am lost in daydreams of life. As of recent, I use this simple trick more often.

Chernobyl

I am sure you might have not understood anything from above paragraph. But I will try to explain in few more. The task is difficult as this whole blog is dedicated to explaining unexplainable existence of human consciousness. Often, we can trap our existence into a second, or a thought. But taken in isolation this thought or a second has no meaning as well. Yet we derive a meaning, create values and chase dreams after dreams in our lives. And only when we are exhausted and failed, we look back and try to understand what and why it goes wrong. And that'd natural. It happened to me as per countless others in the past. But then we realize there is something called ground zero. Death is a good example, as it separates and put a limit to life. So, several times each day when I am exhausted or happy or even elated, I take a deep breath and remind myself that there is a ground zero, with no meaning exactly at this moment, behind all the numbers I chase. And it makes me humble, separated from greed and remind me I could just chose to be a silent observer of life.

I am sure if you have lived enough life beyond teenage years, you have felt ground zero. It may be a breakup, or a death, or even little bit of climate change. But have you learned the lesson? Or just carry on chasing another dream like me?

Let's take a moment to remind ourselves our own ground zero. It can be a good mindfulness trick for your bag of tricks.